10 Great Gifts for Map Lovers and Travelers

If you’re looking for a holiday gift for someone who loves maps—or someone who loves to travel, or loves where they live, or drinks beer, or went to college—you’ve come to the right place. We love all those things too, so we’ve made a wish list of cool, mappy stuff that we’d be thrilled to see under the tree this year.

With prices ranging from $13 to a thousand dollars, there’s bound to be something for everyone. You might even find a gift for that one person who’s always so hard to cross off your list.

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Who wouldn’t want to sleep under Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Map?

Photograph by Haptic Lab

The $289 Dymaxion quilt from Haptic Lab will impress any map geek you give it to.

If you really want to make an impression, though, take a few minutes before you present this gift to read up on the Dymaxion map—Buckminster Fuller’s world projection that makes Earth’s landmass appear as a single island in one ocean. You could casually mention that Fuller called his map a “satisfactory deck plan of the six and one half sextillion tons Spaceship Earth.”

(And if you think the Dymaxion projection is cool but your budget is small, get this nifty little Dymaxion folding globe for just $15.)

A subtle topographic map of Antarctica on the front and back of Field Notes’s Expedition notebook adds a cartographic flourish.

Photograph by Betsy Mason

The waterproof, dot-gridded pages of the Expedition notebook from Field Notes are super-practical for sketching maps out in the real world. But it’s the added touch of a topographic map of Antarctica—subtly printed into the varnish on the front and back cover—that makes these little notebooks supercool. Measuring 3.5 inches by 5.5 inches, they retail for $12.95 a three pack—the perfect stocking stuffer.

Field Notes makes another fun series of notebooks for geography nerds. Each of the 50 states (and Washington, D.C.) gets its own version of the County Fair edition, filled with state facts, figures, and weird trivia. Did you know, for instance, that California’s official state insect is the California dogface butterfly?

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Get your hometown on a USGS map made into a puzzle.

Photograph by National Geographic

We all have people on our list who seem to already have everything—and who also seem to come up with thoughtful gifts for you every time. The pressure’s always on to reciprocate in kind.

Fortunately, if this person likes maps—or puzzles, or where they live—you’re in luck. They almost certainly don’t have a custom-made National Geographic puzzle—made from a U.S. Geological Survey topographic map—of their hometown. But now you can buy one, on sale, for $70. How thoughtful of you!

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This map of natural and industrial resources in the United States is based on a style from the 1940s.

Map by Stephen Smith

The map lovers in your life probably have several atlases and coffee-table books full of historically important maps. But they probably don’t have the brand-new Atlas of Design—and they’re sure to love it. It’s a collection of beautiful, modern maps made by working cartographers, hand-selected by members of the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS).

These maps are made using data from OpenStreetMap. The shirts, from American Apparel, are 100 percent polyester and will run you £28 ($35). Shipping to the United States is a little extra, but if you order soon, you might still be able to sneak one of these shirts under the tree.

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You can help save this 1775 map of the Florida and Louisiana coasts by British cartographer Thomas Jefferys.

You can choose to save a specific map or atlas for anywhere from $75 to $24,000. Or you can give a gift of any amount that will go to the map in greatest need at the moment. Once a map is saved, it will be digitized and put online for anyone to enjoy.

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The best-selling town for these college-map glasses? State College, Pennsylvania—home of Penn State University’s renowned geography program.

Photograph courtesy The Uncommon Green

Know anyone who likes beer and went to college? If so, that’s a friend worth keeping. Shell out $28 for pair of pint glasses wrapped in street maps from the home base of your friend’s alma mater.

You can choose from dozens of major college towns in the U.S., including Cambridge, Massachusetts; Madison, Wisconsin; and Berkeley, California. And if the beer drinker on your list went to a less well known school, you can get a custom-etched glass with a map of Orem, Utah, or Conway, Arkansas, for just a few dollars more.

See how Boston grew with these cool map coasters that show changes through time.

Photograph courtesy Uncommongoods

You’ll obviously need some coasters for those map glasses you bought, and UncommonGoods has several options. My favorite is the acrylic coaster set, which illustrates how different cities grew over time. Boston (shown above) is a great example because so much of it is on man-made land; you can see how the city expanded into the harbor as it grew. Los Angeles is another neat one. Other options include Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, and Austin, Texas.

Until December 13, you can get a customized set of four map coasters for $65. If you miss the deadline, you can print out a card with a photo of the coasters, then put that under the tree. I think the best thing about these coasters is that they actually include a scale bar! Another option from UncommonGoods is a neat set of wooden coasters with a map of neighborhoods from select U.S. cities, including Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon.

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A 3-D printed map of Canyonlands in Utah will make a unique and surprising gift. Photograph by Lisa Grasshoff

A three-dimensional relief map of a beautiful landscape like Canyonlands (above) or the Teton Range of the Rocky Mountains will surprise map geeks, travelers, and hikers alike. Made by digital cartographer Ian Grasshoff, who makes 3-D printed models as well, these maps are based on open-source data and software.

Grasshoff has already created plenty of models of places like Lake Tahoe, Mount Hood, and Hawaii, with prices ranging from $56 to $470. But you can also ask him to make a model of any place you like. A custom map might not arrive in time for the holidays, but it will surely be worth the wait.

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Put a piece of Italy, in 3-D, on your wall.

Photo courtesy Chisel & Mouse

If a 3-D mountainscape isn’t your taste, how about a 3-D map of an iconic city, like Rome (above)? You can also choose from Venice, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, New York, or Chicago, with prices ranging from $215 to $965.

Chisel & Mouse makes models of individual buildings as well. If you’ve got a little more time and a lot more money, they’ll make a map of any cityscape you like.